Etymology
by Celira
Summary: [II: Katara, peasant] What's in a word? A series of individual pieces in the same fictional postseries universe, each set around character introspection. Disregards season 3. Faint hints of Zutara.
1. zuko,  change

Part 1 of a four, possibly five-part series of one-shots. Each has its own separate one-word title, but each is also centered around the word and character(s) listed in the chapter menu above. Takes place post-series, set in a nice happy fictional future of my making. I'm still in denial!

Zuko-centric. Faint Zutara hints; blink and you'll miss it. (So blink if you don't like it.)

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_Mutable_

Change is a word thrown about too often, he muses.

By the dissatisfied commonfolk who couldn't help but want what they didn't have, or the disgruntled wealthy who couldn't realize that they had it already, and people in general who weren't courageous enough to use a word that better highlighted their own inadequacies.

Or better yet, by the women fluttering and flocking in the marketplaces every morning, recounting in breathless excitement their latest _life-changing experience _and their entirely new outlook on things! which may or may not have been influenced by the handsome young traveling philosopher who happened to be in town that day.

(the herb-lore guru who he'd summoned on request of his uncle, who was in need of an uncommon leaf of local tea, commented idly that making a living of philosophy made you less qualified to teach it than those who'd lived it)

By the councilors and politicians in court, wheedling that change was needed in the budgeting of the treasury, or that peace was pleasant but sorely overrated and that change brought on by the might of the Fire Nation might be, ah, beneficial--

(at which point he would point out that he was instrumental in bringing about the peace they so carelessly referred to, and his observation would be punctuated by a sudden leap in all the lighted flames)

By the noblewomen who endeavored to dig their long, painted talons into him from before he'd even hit puberty and laughed liltingly-- and gratingly-- on how easily men could change, chiseled away by their wiles, left to fall once goals were attained.

(and of course they were baffled when they realized that none of them had enough of an effect to _change_ the then-prince-now-Fire-Lord's demeanor enough to their liking, save for perhaps the fact that he was so much more inwardly annoyed when they were around)

But he had grown too old in too short of a lifespan so far to suggest that people never changed and events never changed them. The marred skin over a third of his head, the subtle traces of his uncle he hadn't taken note of until he realized a steaming cup of tea was never absent from his own side (he favored chrysanthemum tea but damned if he'd let that become common knowledge), the day he faced a boy-turned-young-man with arrows across his skin and a world on his shoulders, without malice--

The person who's changed him the most and yet not at all laughs, and he feels the tease of water against his cheek though he sits well over an arm's length from her.

You don't have to change, she says; not for me.

_But I have,_ he thinks, _or at the very least you've brought out parts of me I forgot existed._

Like greater compassion. Like acceptance. Like patience--

And then he finds himself with a lapful of happy waterbender and wonders just how much patience he'll really have if she keeps _teasing him like that._

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	2. katara, peasant

Part two of five; Katara-centric.

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_Gentry_

Peasant?

Katara is _not _a peasant.

She is not even a commoner. She _is_ the daughter of a chief, not that the general populace around here would equate that to anything on _their _level; she _is_ the representative of one of the remnants of a formidable bending art that finds very few students these days, no-thanks-to the Fire Nation's efforts in fairly recent history. In fact, she's a _master _waterbender, and if that doesn't at least garner basic respect in this black-and-white world of backwards favor-currying where force is power, certainty means authority, and councilors and advisors and generals say everything _but _what they mean, then she doesn't know what does.

But the days of old long before there were comets and before there _weren't _any more air nomads are long gone, and the fact remains that Katara has to prove herself at every turn. It doesn't matter what she's done, who she's saved, or how she's helped-- it is back to square one for this disgruntled waterbender and she is under a magnifying glass. And feeling the heat. Not that there are light rays burning her to bits, but whether it's from all of the fire, or the glares of the noblewomen, or simply the layers of formal wear, she might as well be under a giant focusing lens.

Getting a tan.

_Speaking of which._

Back to the original point! Her darker complexion doesn't automatically signify that she's a peasant! Whose bright, bigoted idea was is to find all the dark-skinned people in the nation and label them peasants? If a Fire Nation citizen were stuck in either of the Poles and exposed to the kind of sun that her people cope with generation after generation, they'd-- actually, since they're so quick to call them peasants, could they be called firebrands? tomatoes? rednecks? Peasants, honestly. There's not even any farmland on ice. And skin color doesn't mean a thing! If everyone had standards of beauty numbskulled as those of the Fire Nation citizens, they'd all look like clones, and besides, what do you mean that--

"Katara, you're ranting again," says Sokka, "and I don't much think Zuko minds any of that, unfortunately."

She automatically reaches up to the enameled flame in her hair and blushes.

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Reviews are welcome. :P


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